Composition T0, arranger T1, an important contributor to the introduction of R&B to China, composition is more difficult than Jay Chou.

From the perspective of composition structure, orchestration timbre, arrangement details, intervals and tones, the complexity of Tao Zhe’s music is generally higher than that of Jay Chou. Even for Tao Zhe's simple-sounding songs, such as "You Will Marry Me Today" and "MELODY", if you carefully explore the orchestration timbre and harmony direction, you will find that Tao Zhe's target market is not entirely Chinese. In fact, There is a certain benchmark against the European and American R&B market.

From the aesthetic point of view of the music audience, it can be said that Jay Chou's success is largely due to the music market established by Tao Zhe. Because of Jay Chou's music, junior high school students and high school students who don't need any musical literacy will also like it very much, because Jay Chou's melodies are simple enough and nice enough, and they have reached the level of phenomenal promotion. Tao Zhe did not use popular melodies to promote music.

The introduction of every type of European and American music is a great progress for Chinese music, which was extremely lacking in early content. Before Tao Zhe, there were pop rock styles such as Yu Chengqing's "Let Me Love You Enough at Once". After Tao Zhe, there were also Wang Leehom's hip-hop and R&B styles, JJ Lin's melodic lyrical style, and Deng Ziqi's hybrid style. But in essence, Tao Zhe's number of classic tracks and market audience size are much higher than those of other musicians. Knowing the emergence of Jay Chou, Tao Zhe took a backseat to Jay Chou.

Tao Zhe is an American national. He himself has no experience in pop music production or vocal music education, but essentially he and Jay Chou are the same type of genius. He studied at the University of California, Los Angeles, majoring in psychology and film, and even joined the local police department as a civilian after graduation. In the early days, making music was just a hobby for Tao Zhe.

The following is a simple exposition from three perspectives: composition, arrangement, orchestration, and singing, with comparison with Jay Chou as the main content. 1: Composition: perfect melody range;

Tao Zhe’s composition can be regarded as an epoch-making musical progress at that time, and rhythm and blues music began to take root in Chinese orchestras. In 1997, when the masses of us were still listening to "Sister, You Take the Bow", Tao Zhe wrote "Eleven-thirty at the Airport" and "Love, Very Simple". Listening to these two songs today, they are still extremely advanced. It is not inferior to Jay Chou and has a special sense of rhythm. That’s the advantage of genre music.

The core type of Tao Zhe’s composition is the pursuit of high register and emotional expression. The biggest difference between Tao Zhe and Jay Chou is that Tao Zhe does not reduce the difficulty of his composition because of public aesthetics. Obviously he is not a non-professional with singing skills as his core competitiveness, but Tao Zhe always puts himself to death in his compositions. For his first album, basically every song has five sets of pitch expressions. And this situation has persisted to this day. Even though Tao Zhe's voice was severely affected, there are still a large number of five groups of harmonies in the key and sound range of the original song.

This is extremely rare, because Tao Zhe’s composition pitch is basically the key of a female voice. When Zhou Bichang participated in "Super Girl", he sang Tao Zhe's music, all in the original tune. This shows that Tao Zhe's musical understanding in 1997 has reached the top level of understanding in 2022. Leehom Wang's composition mode is consistent with that of Tao Zhe 20 or 30 years ago. From a musical perspective, Jay Chou's music mode is on the low side.

What does high register mean? It means basic top-level emotional expression and an advanced understanding of composition. Top pop music has regular registers. According to statistics from around the world, those music with great phenomenal level are often concentrated in a fixed range A4-D5, especially the two pitches of B4 and C5. Whether auditory or mathematical, C5 represents an absolute beauty. When the pitch of the chorus part of a song is concentrated at C5, it is often easier to obtain better emotional expression. This touches on the basic common sense of the emotional tension and expression of a song.

This common sense applies worldwide. European and American music is very easy to accept for our Chinese music circle, but on the contrary, our Chinese music is difficult for European and American music audiences to accept. The best examples are singers like Xue Zhiqian and Mao Buyi. No matter how many people think their music is good on the Internet, after being heard by Japanese female musicians across borders, there is only one feeling: This is not what we did in the 1980s. The level?

This is also one of Tao Zhe’s great contributions to Chinese music as an American national. He improved the singing range of Chinese male singers, which gives our audience more hearing possibilities in our music-barren land. contribute. It was also the beginning of the decline of the common voice area of ??the Four Heavenly Kings. Although Tao Zhe's singing voice is stuck, but from the perspective of composition range, he is still the most advanced Chinese singer back then.

At the same time, in terms of singing, Tao Zhe is the one who has played the most live performances among the five high-pitched groups among Chinese male singers. Although he often has car accidents, the most essential part of the songs he writes is still the early A4-D5 high-pitched range. between. It was also because the register was too high that Tao Zhe directly ignored Jay Chou's wide range of melodies in registers below A4 when creating melody. It has not benefited from the spread of the sound area that the Chinese-speaking public is most enthusiastic about. 2: Arranger; Chinese T1 arranger, European and American arranger resources.

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In terms of arrangement, I personally think that Tao Zhe is second only to Zhong Xingmin, Lin Michael, and Hong Jingyao. Tao Zhe's disadvantage is that his music arrangement style is focused on R&B, and he has no other shortcomings. Among them, Tao Zhe and Michael Lin are the closest because they are both American nationals. They both create music based on American arrangement ideas and like to use strings and electronic instruments. But Tao Zhe is different from the three Jay Chou master arrangers. He attaches great importance to the unity of rhythm and orchestration. This led to Tao Zhe's limitations - he had to do all the arranging and composing. This is actually very limiting.

In fact, the top music creation model is not done by one person like Tao Zhe and Li Ronghao, but a situation where multiple people work together like Jay Chou. Everyone performs their own duties and has multiple functions. Possibility and bursts of aura. This is also the biggest difference and shortcoming between Tao Zhe and Jay Chou. Jay Chou is a very imaginative person, while Tao Zhe's imaginativeness is limited to R&B. Although he made attempts at jazz, rock and other genres in his later years, R&B was still turbulent in his bones or in his brain.

Apart from the type of music, Tao Zhe's arrangement and orchestration are actually extremely advanced. His target music orchestration and timbres are all top European and American music producers. In the music studio established by Tao Zhe himself, the production is based on the scale of the music studios on Sunset Boulevard in Europe and the United States. Tao Zhe's American nationality has been put to great use here. First of all, the overall craftsmanship of European and American music arrangement and production is far superior to that of Chinese. The scale of their music and the core of their arrangement serve the ultimate emotional rendering.

Taking "mars Baby" as an example, Tao Zhe used an effect sound called Vocoder. This timbre is basically blank in Chinese music, and our aesthetic focus is on Zhong Xingmin. But the Vocoder used by Tao Zhe directly expanded the boundaries of the instrument.

Vocoder is essentially a scientific product. In order to restore the voices of some mute people to normal timbres, European and American arrangers used this instrument backwards in subsequent developments. Transform the originally normal sound into a mute timbre effect, giving the overall sound of a mechanical machine. In the European and American music circles that Tao Zhe came into contact with, many top electronic singers use this instrument. For example: DaftPunk.

The difference in music environment puts Tao Zhe basically in an undefeated position. He can add any advantageous dimension of European and American arrangements to Chinese music. The songs produced in this way are essentially a kind of progress, innovation and a novel element for Chinese music. 3: Singing skills: high throat position;

Unlike the high level of composition and arrangement, I personally think that Tao Zhe's vocal singing skills are relatively weak. Of course, this is compared to the top music aesthetics among the national teams and conservatories. Compared to the ordinary pop music market, Tao Zhe's Live can still beat most people, but there are also many car accidents.

Tao Zhe has no music learning experience. Vocal music is different from music production and arrangement with the help of software and resources. Vocal music relies on years of training and systematic cognitive learning. Tao Zhe just lacks a vocal system. In his early masterpiece Live, there are a lot of dry howls and jammed high-throat improvisations, which are killers for the vocal ligaments of the throat.

At this point, any Live that Tao Zhe appears in is viewed as a strong mix track, and even the strong mix track has obvious symptoms of muteness of the real voice and loss of vocal ligament thickness. This is an obvious voice inversion, and the problem is that Tao Zhe did not reduce his vocal range at all. He still has to sing B4 and C5 when he loses his voice. This is really uncompromising at heart, completely different from Jay Chou, but it also causes injuries every time he sings.

Generally speaking, Tao Zhe represents the era when European and American music began to enter the Chinese music market. After Tao Zhe, Wang Leehom and Fang Datong, who are also American nationals, came to the Chinese music market and once again showed another style. R&B and soul music, the same Singaporean JJ Lin also came to Chinese development.

But no matter what, whether it is Tao Zhe, Wang Leehom or Lin JJ, they all have the advantages of external music resources and environment. There is only one person who is born to be self-improving and extraordinary, a representative of the local Chinese-Jay Chou. .